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kevinds
Premium Member
join:2003-05-01
Calgary, AB

kevinds to kushblazers

Premium Member

to kushblazers

Re: [ALL] Explosion at Shaw Court knocks out most of Shaw servic

If when you get back to your cabin normally, and you have to call to have your terminal reactivated, you likely will again.

The DACs are/were all in Calgary, so until they get the backups in place, or the office fixed, not likely.

kushblazers
@telus.net

kushblazers

Anon

Ya I figured I would have to wait til the call centers are back up. Any idea on when that might be? I am not familiar with Shaw and its business nor that industry so I am just curious but how come Shaw relies on Calgary so heavily? What I mean is how come a fire in Calgary affects all of shaws website capabilities and call centers? Wouldn't it be smarter to have call centers based regionally??

Anonytech
@shawcable.net

Anonytech to kevinds

Anon

to kevinds
The dac's are located in a different office and are not affected by this outage. If the dacs went, all stb's in southern alberta would go dark. All services phone, internet, tv, vod are all working as those run on seperate networks, however the downtown core services are affected. The hubsite had no power and therefore would have stopped working.

Satellite for your information uses a sac, not a dac. The sac isn't located in canada at all. The issue however is since the internal IT network was affected by this, provisioning systems are down. That is what is being sorted out today and other services that where affected - radio, calgary services and so forth.

Also, the fire happened on the 13 floor in the power utility room. The hub and server equipment are located on the main floor and other floors. The issue was at peter mentioned in the press conference was that the trasformer blew up, caught on fire and as the backup generator started to turn on to feed the ups, the sprinklers went off and took out that equipment as well. In any event, if the transformer did not catch on fire, the Backup/DR would have kicked in. I can gurantee that shaw tests generators out, switching to backup power often, but obviously they can't test with water being in the mix and unforeseeable events. What this will most likely result in is looking at additional power backups in case your primary and backup go.

Fibers and equipement should be ok as long as no surges took out servers, and no water damage, but again they are on different floors so who knows. The fire wouldn't have affected fiber as the utility room is just hvac and power.

zed173
join:2010-07-17
Mississauga, ON

zed173

Member

Any particular reason why there was sprinklers around electrical equipment and not FM200 or another dry agent instead? Seems it was a problem waiting to happen all along.

kevinds
Premium Member
join:2003-05-01
Calgary, AB

kevinds

Premium Member

That was my first thought too... why water, other than cost, overall cost after the sprinklers go off however though, makes it long-term more cost effective.

I'm not sure all the rules, but FM200 is not to be used where people 'normally' work?

sdha
@telus.net

sdha to Anonytech

Anon

to Anonytech
said by Anonytech :

The dac's are located in a different office and are not affected by this outage. If the dacs went, all stb's in southern alberta would go dark. All services phone, internet, tv, vod are all working as those run on seperate networks, however the downtown core services are affected. The hubsite had no power and therefore would have stopped working.

Satellite for your information uses a sac, not a dac. The sac isn't located in canada at all. The issue however is since the internal IT network was affected by this, provisioning systems are down. That is what is being sorted out today and other services that where affected - radio, calgary services and so forth.

Also, the fire happened on the 13 floor in the power utility room. The hub and server equipment are located on the main floor and other floors. The issue was at peter mentioned in the press conference was that the trasformer blew up, caught on fire and as the backup generator started to turn on to feed the ups, the sprinklers went off and took out that equipment as well. In any event, if the transformer did not catch on fire, the Backup/DR would have kicked in. I can gurantee that shaw tests generators out, switching to backup power often, but obviously they can't test with water being in the mix and unforeseeable events. What this will most likely result in is looking at additional power backups in case your primary and backup go.

Fibers and equipement should be ok as long as no surges took out servers, and no water damage, but again they are on different floors so who knows. The fire wouldn't have affected fiber as the utility room is just hvac and power.

Glad no one was hurt. But I guess its a lesson learnt, and not just for shaw but all data "communication" service providers. The City when into distress over one indecent. Could you image if the incident was not isolated?

They talk about are power grid being suitable, but is are "communication" grid suitable? Then again they are partly the same.

Glad the situation at Shaw is under control. =->

zed173
join:2010-07-17
Mississauga, ON

zed173 to kevinds

Member

to kevinds
Yeah you can have it in buildings where people work (I work in one now). Only requirements are signage, warning lights (first stage) and alarms (second stage). And it can only be in equipment rooms, not office area, stuff like that.
Glen T
join:2003-11-03
BC

Glen T

Member

Ironically, we had Shaw installers on site in our office this afternoon, as we were in the process of switching all of our ISP services and phone from Telus to Shaw.

They completed the installation of hardware, but we remain on Telus. No activation and no on-line lights on our new Shaw modem. We are located in Burnaby BC.

kevinds
Premium Member
join:2003-05-01
Calgary, AB

kevinds to zed173

Premium Member

to zed173
said by zed173:

Yeah you can have it in buildings where people work (I work in one now). Only requirements are signage, warning lights (first stage) and alarms (second stage). And it can only be in equipment rooms, not office area, stuff like that.

That is what was meaning by where people normally are, people are not normally in equipment rooms.

The DAC is only needed to change things, add/remove channels, PPV, shutting down a DAC will not 'disable' all STBs.
I have read the DAC manual - boring but neat. My terminal did not get communication from the DAC at 2:30 as it normally does, 11th at 0230 was the last time.

Which country is Shaw Direct's in? Are you sure SAC is correct? I can find no references to it.
Glen T
join:2003-11-03
BC

Glen T

Member

Additional info:

Fire Chief Bruce Burrell, who heads the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, said the Shaw building is a "key hub" for national, provincial and municipal networking infrastructure.

“Certainly it's a relatively new building. It was specially designed special purpose built for this, engineered specifically to have double redundancies in it. So whatever has failed I'm sure will be quite a topic for discussion,” he said.

Peter Bissonnette, president of Shaw Communications, apologized for the breakdown.

It’s not yet clear why the backup system failed to take over, but he said the activation of the sprinkler system might have played a role. He said they have to be careful about bringing services back.

“We absolutely apologize for what has happened, and we're doing our best to restore services and we are in an emergency restoration process. So it may seem it's taking a little bit longer, but that length is actually necessary to ensure that things are done safely.”

Bissonnette said it's still unclear what caused the initial fire.
Expand your moderator at work

AnonyTech
@shawcable.net

AnonyTech to kevinds

Anon

to kevinds

Re: [ALL] Explosion at Shaw Court knocks out most of Shaw servic

Search up NAS-RAC Access Control. Its in the first line of the document

(SAC) - satellite access control

Its a facility for all satellite related authorizations.

You won't find specs or any other info on the sac as it is not a productized item that is sold to companys. The dac however is.

You are right that if an stb lost communication to the dac,as long as the keys do not roll you would still receive channels and be authorized. That scenario is either a poor signal or bad splitters that break the link back to shaw, but the dacs are still up. You also didn't mention that the dacs control linear edge device that encrypts the signal, provision channel maps, create channels and so forth. You have talked about the customer aspect of the dac, authorizing channels, adding / removing stbs, but there also is a cable operator aspect too.

Hopefully this sheds some light.
HeadSpinning
MNSi Internet
join:2005-05-29
Windsor, ON

HeadSpinning to zed173

Member

to zed173
said by zed173:

Yeah you can have it in buildings where people work (I work in one now). Only requirements are signage, warning lights (first stage) and alarms (second stage). And it can only be in equipment rooms, not office area, stuff like that.

When talking with the risk management consultant from our insurance carrier, they said that they don't recommend FM-200 for electrical rooms - rather they'd prefer to see water.

We were pretty surprised. His explanation was that most electrical switchgear isn't really harmed by water. Typically, the panels are designed to shed water unless it is spraying directly on them.

If there IS a fire, water will put it out, and cool things down. From a recovery point of view, you then have to replace the failed equipment, and in theory dry off any switchgear that got wet, but then for the most part, you're back in business.

Your UPS and other electronic (not electric) equipment will likely of course be damaged by the water.

I was surprised.
MaynardKrebs
We did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee.
Premium Member
join:2009-06-17

MaynardKrebs

Premium Member

said by HeadSpinning:

When talking with the risk management consultant from our insurance carrier, they said that they don't recommend FM-200 for electrical rooms - rather they'd prefer to see water.

Hope you got that in writing from him & the insurance company.
Doonz (banned)
join:2010-11-27
Beaumont, AB

Doonz (banned)

Member

said by MaynardKrebs:

said by HeadSpinning:

When talking with the risk management consultant from our insurance carrier, they said that they don't recommend FM-200 for electrical rooms - rather they'd prefer to see water.

Hope you got that in writing from him & the insurance company.

No Nothing But Water in Electrical rooms. Equipment rooms are different
ravenchilde
join:2011-04-01

ravenchilde

Member

said by Doonz:

No Nothing But Water in Electrical rooms. Equipment rooms are different

»www.cbc.ca/news/technolo ··· nse.html

According to Peter Bissonette (president of Shaw Communications) by city fire code they have to use a "Wet" fire retardant as Halon is now banned.

shaw user
@shawcable.net

shaw user

Anon

From the CBC article...

While Shaw is sorry for the inconvenience the outage caused, it says it's not responsible for backing up government data and suggest the outage is somewhat "politicized."

While Shaw might not be "responsible" for backing up the data, as the one operating the data center should they not work their customers to ensure there is a plan B in place?
stolen
join:2004-04-12
Calgary, AB

stolen

Member

said by shaw user :

From the CBC article...

While Shaw is sorry for the inconvenience the outage caused, it says it's not responsible for backing up government data and suggest the outage is somewhat "politicized."

While Shaw might not be "responsible" for backing up the data, as the one operating the data center should they not work their customers to ensure there is a plan B in place?

In the case of IBM being a tenant of Shaw Court (the building), no.
You wouldn't expect a Co-Location facility to tell you how to run your business if you put a server in it, would you?

shaw user
@74.198.150.x

shaw user

Anon

I was under the impression Shaw was the one operating the data center, not a third party. Thanks for the clarification.
ravenchilde
join:2011-04-01

ravenchilde

Member

said by shaw user :

I was under the impression Shaw was the one operating the data center, not a third party. Thanks for the clarification.

My understanding is that IBM was already in the building (Shaw Court) leasing space they had turned into a 'data center' when Shell sold it to Shaw. Shaw inherited them as a tenant, and was responsible for providing building services. Power, water, heat, etc.